The explosive proliferation of the World Wide Web (the Web) has created a niche of writing called web authoring, which consists of creating content, hyperlinking it to other (perhaps already hyperlinked) material, and publishing the results on the Web as web pages. A web page is a data-filled object that is interconnected to other web pages by means of one or more hyperlinks. A hyperlink (or link) is a mechanism for getting from a source to a destination or target in a collection, i.e., a web, of web pages.
Creating and hyperlinking content occur during the private generation of a personal web, which is then made publicly available on the Web. The process is complete when viewers engage the Web through a browser and serve as an audience to what has been authored. Information on the Web can be accessed by any computer with the right hardware (e.g., a way to connect itself to the Web by ethernet, modem, etc.) and the right software (e.g., a browser). A browser presents web pages to an end user, enabling him or her to follow or navigate links to move from one location to another by clicking on hotspots (described below).
Data on the Web is typically embedded with machine code called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which appears as tags marking the content elements of a web page. These tags are interpreted by a browser as indications of how to render the final output of a web page for viewing purposes. The tags themselves, once interpreted by a browser, are invisible to the viewer.
Perhaps the most important HTML tag is the anchor tag, <a>, which designates the presence of a hyperlink. A link can be thought of as a connector with two endpoints: a beginning (the source) and a destination (the target). The source of the link is also referred to as a hotspot, an active place within a web page that can be clicked by a user in a browser to lead to another web page. Hotspots are usually marked by evocative text called “linked text” or an image intimating the destination of the link. Hotspots are created by using the <a> tag and including a valid Uniform Resource Locator (URL) as an HREF attribute. For example, the following HTML code defines a hotspot marked by the linked text, “example link,” which, when clicked on in a browser, will lead to the top of the HTML document located at “some.URL.html”.                <a HREF=“http://some.URL.html”>example link</a>Note the syntactic elements such as:        <a> and </a>, which denote the onset and completion of an anchor, respectively;        the HREF attribute, which must be included within the initiating <a> tag;        the value of the HREF attribute, which is a URL enclosed in quotation marks; and        the placement of linked text in the space between the onset <a> and ending </a> tag.        
This HTML syntax poses overhead to a novice user wanting to author web pages. For this reason, WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) HTML editors have been developed, such as Netscape's Composer, Macromedia's Dreamweaver, and Adobe's GoLive. The WYSIWYG interface automates link creation by offering a make link (or similarly named) command that can be accessed by selecting a visual icon or an option from a pull-down menu. This selection opens a corresponding pop-up dialog box or property window with editable fields that prompts a user to input the required link information, after which the link is created. In these systems, the user needs to know only the substantial components of a desired link, i.e., the linked text and target URL, but does not need to know the syntax of HTML.
For example, to create a hotspot using Netscape's Composer, a user clicks a link icon that appears as a linked chain. Doing so immediately triggers a dialog box that prompts the user to input the linked text, HREF URL, and any other desired HTML tags. The user can instead select a choose-file button within the dialog box to prompt presentation of a menu display of files. Selection of one of the presented files eliminates the need for typing in the HREF value by hand.
Macromedia Dreamweaver has a similar functionality that allows an author also to create a link to a new file, i.e., one not already in existence. This option presents a dialog box containing fields for the name of the new document and the linked text that will act as the hotspot in the selected document. This feature is very much like Composer's link dialog box, except that it allows an author to create and name a new file to which the previously selected file will link.
Dreamweaver offers several other WYSIWYG methods for creating a link between documents, none of which differ significantly from those of Composer, except possibly the point-to-file method. An area of text in a document can be selected to act as the hotspot for a nascent link. From this point, a variety of linking tools are available for the author to select the file to which the hotspot will point. The make-link command opens a select-file box that displays a menu of existing files from which the author can select. The link field in the property inspector window takes the pathname of a linked-to file. This pathname can be indicated by the author by: a) typing the pathname in by hand; b) clicking the folder icon, which presents a menu display of files that can be selected; or c) clicking a point-to-file icon that allows the author to drag an extendable line to any file on the desktop or to a separate window, named Site, that contains all of the items to be included in the web.
Adobe GoLive also allows an author to mark an area of text in a document and call a link function by clicking an icon pictured as a linked chain. A link inspector window, which is similar to Composer's link dialog box, is opened to reveal a field in which the author can input a URL to which a nascent link will point. The link inspector has an additional feature of a point-and-shoot icon, similar to Dreamweaver's point-to-file icon, that can be used to select target files. The author clicks the point-and-shoot icon and then drags an extendable line to select any file icon on the desktop. GoLive also features a site window showing all files in the web. The point-and-shoot mechanism can be used to select items directly from the site window, which is accessible in the region just outside the link inspector. The user is exhorted to place all items to be included in the website in the site window before beginning any web authoring.
The different WYSIWYG editors attempt to automate link generation by providing a variety of simple methods by which an author can select a target file without being familiar with HTML. In most cases, however, all files must be created before a link can be generated. In the one case described above in which a file is created at the time of link generation, the author must select the file name of the new file and later add content to the file.
A variety of different methods for implementing link generation are found in the patent literature. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,595, issued to Gentner, discloses a method for creating a hypertext link in an original document to a target document. When an anchor icon is dragged from a target page to an original page, a link is created and the name of the target page is inserted as the linked text. While this method further streamlines the link automation process by inserting the linked text automatically, it still requires the author to create and name each of the files to be linked.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,708,825, issued to Sotomayer, discloses a method for automatically creating summary pages of documents and embedding hyperlinks in the summary pages and original documents. Content of a source document is semantically analyzed automatically to determine key topics that are then copied into the summary page. Links are created between the topic listing and the associated text, which is copied into a presentation page. This method is useful for creating and organizing a structure of documents to make viewing more efficient and informative. A viewer can navigate through a large amount of material while viewing small, easy to understand portions. However, while the method does allow an author to select analysis parameters, it uses an automatic process for parsing the source document and is therefore only as reliable as the quality of the semantic analysis method. The author cannot control exactly which text is inserted into each file. It also requires that the source document be in a final version before the process is initiated. There is no provision for editing documents after creation. If the author decides to modify text after the files are created, either the process must be repeated or each file must be changed manually by the author.